Throughout the first third of Beloved, Sethe is continually described by her iron-eyes and iron-will. One of her most common descriptors, I believe Morrison uses this adjective to depict how Sethe has had to close herself off to the world (and love) for her own survival.
The earliest chronological mention we have of this description is: “Sethe was thirteen when she came to Sweet Home and already iron-eyed” (Morrison 12). As the reader learns more about Sethe’s childhood, separated from her mother and taken care of by other young children, one can understand how she comes to see the world as harsh and unforgiving. “Iron” brings up connotations of toughness, strength, and unbreakability, but also dullness, emptiness, and imprisonment. The complexity of this word does exactly what, I argue, Morrison wants it to do – makes you see Sethe as a strong woman who has endured many hardships, but also as someone who has been forced to hide herself away and become closed off to people in order to survive. Eyes are the window to the soul, and Sethe’s soul is hardened and closed-off. And understandably so.
The narrative mentions how “in all of Baby’s life, as well as Sethe’s own, men and women were moved around like checkers,” which means that to get too close to anyone was a risk you could not take (27). To love someone, even your own children, is a danger to yourself and them — Baby Suggs says she “could not love” and “would not” (28). Even with these lessons having made her iron-eyed, Sethe was lulled into a false sense of security at Sweet Home, coming to love the other men and her husband, having her own children, and feeling relatively settled. She lost most of that “iron-eyed,” or closed off, quality as she lived there, and she calls her past self “reckless” and says “a bigger fool never lived” because of it (28).
Since she started to “lean on” others, losing the mental walls against love she had built, the schoolteacher’s assault was even more violating and destructive. Morrison says that “What he [the schoolteacher] did broke three more Sweet Home men and punched the glittering iron out of Sethe’s eyes, leaving two open wells that did not reflect firelight” (11). The rape and humiliation caused by the schoolteacher killed Sethe’s fire, her determination, and her humanity, leaving her feeling hallow and broken. He stripped her of the last mental defense she had, and what resulted was a total violation of her body and her soul. All of the good qualities of iron were ‘punched out,’ leaving only the dull, closed off parts.
When Paul D finds Sethe 18 years later, he remarks that “now the iron was back but the face, softened by hair, made him trust her enough” (11). Away from the horrors of the schoolteacher, though still struggling with it in her memory, Sethe has softened some of that iron and let love back into her life, which Paul D calls “very risky. For a used-to-be slave woman to love anything that much was dangerous, especially if it was her children she had settled on to love” (54). She lives in a sort of middle ground – letting her walls fall, opening herself up to love, but remaining weary. After the cruelty inflicted on her, she had to rebuild that iron, rebuild those walls she put up, to survive.
I believe that the significance of the iron-eyes is to reflect on the measures taken by slaves to survive in the cruel world they inhabited. This weariness of the world forms a kind of mask and barrier between her and the outside world, reflecting her position as a slave, only able to watch and not act. She’s locked inside herself with iron chains of her own making to protect her soul, though this also means she can be trapped in there, struggling with her own memories and thoughts.
I really like your interpretation of the use of “iron-eyed” and “iron-willed” in Beloved. I also thought of prison bars when I thought the word iron and how Sethe and the others at Sweet Home, while not technically in a prison, were trapped on the farm and forced to work there while being treated like animals, or sometimes, less than an animal. I think the use of “iron-willed” also matches her determination especially when she fought so hard to escape Sweet Home.
Your reading of this brings to mind Homeric epithets. Your poeticism as you describe this only heightens the comparison; that these descriptions are such a core part of her character that they can be used with such repetition. I think it’s striking that you describe the way that Sethe’s iron defenses of herself are so key to Paul D’s trusting her enough; it says a lot that the only way they could come trust each other is through the reassurance that they will not fully love each other (Sethe’s only allowance for love being towards her children).